L'Anima Nuda
by Swamy
Summary: Missing scene/Post 8x11. Enzo is dead, and maybe a part of Bonnie is too ( and Damon is an awful best friend, he knows).


**Note:** This fanfiction is not straight romantic, it only shows the way in which in my opinion Damon would be there for Bonnie in such a hard moment. Since we can never count on JP and company to have nice things, we better make them happen on our own whenever we can. The title means _The Naked Soul._ It's just a little thing but I hope you nejoy it.

#

Bonnie has to drag their bodies through the house – first Enzo, then Stefan – and arrange them like dolls in a toy party. The stark contrast of Enzo's icy skin and Stefan's hot one is startling but she cannot think of that now or the little strength she has left will fade and she'll crumble on the floor, curled up and crying on the wrong man. That could be ironic, and cruel, and such a very fitting metaphor for her life.

Mortality is an infection that Stefan's old, perfect body is trying to fight, and life is inflaming him from within his core, driving up a fever that is starting to cover him with a veil of perspiration. She places him on the couch and, all the while, the contact with his clammy skin makes her stomach revolt because here she is, taking care of the one person that took away everything she had left that was only hers. She can barely look at him, and with every movement – while she places his feet on the cushions, while she puts his bloody hands on his own chest – she can feel the weight of Enzo's blood on her clothes, the substance of the memories they shared impregnating every fiber of the fabric in spots of red.

She's weak on her legs; but still, she turns her head over her shoulder to look at Enzo, lying on the sofa opposite Stefan. Bonnie can't even pretend he's asleep because his complexion is grey, his once perfect skin is covered in spidery black veins. He wanted to become human for her, die with her, but he went first. He went too soon and she wills something in her submit to the emptiness.

It's the only peace she can get right now.

It's a sad picture, the one they all make. Elena is peacefully sleeping in the middle of it all, obvious and safe the way Bonnie could never be; and she envies her. She wishes so hard that they could switch places, that Kai had put her in a coma instead. Let her sleep and dream and be left alone for sixty years so that she can conjure up the perfect world, distill it into a few blissful moments.

They'd be easy to narrow down, really, a few very sparse ones when the world wasn't waiting for her to save it, when people didn't deem her strong enough to take whatever punch they were going to throw at her. It would be a loop of Grams brushing her hair as she told her stories of their ancestors, making her feel like she would shield her forever from all evils – she never got that feeling again. Maybe Enzo's smiling mouth kissing her as she wakes up inside his arms, promising to love her until his last breath. It makes her grin bitterly how faithful he was to his word.

He was loyal to a fault, and devoted in ways she had never known before him, which is why she won't remember the relief and utter happiness of feeling the vibrations from Damon's rumble of pride as he pressed her against his chest when she got back from the other side. Enzo trusted her, and he loved her as hard as it was humanly possible, but there was little spark of jealousy under the ashes for the place Damon held in her heart, before he could even take a step around it. So no, she wouldn't think of living that memory if she could.

But every scenario, every little thing that kept her going through the years, seems useless now because this pain seems like a void so large she's sure her soul got lost in it. Drained together with Enzo's life, and she likes it that way. She wants to follow him wherever he's gone. Oh, she's going to live, to even the score, to vindicate his death, but she's going to follow him nonetheless – she already did, she thinks as she realizes she's holding his un-beating heart in her hands.

The smell of blood is sickeningly dry and coppery, and minute after minute takes on a vile pungency that tries to suffocate her until she almost gags. It should make her heart shrink, it should make her sob, but she can't do much but feel her body react to it, her stomach turn, her lungs expand with every breath, like she is nothing but the empty shell of herself.

She can't cry, can't feel a thing. Something in her broke. She thinks it's a good thing.

#

Damon hits the brakes and rushes outside the car to run towards the door, but he stops at the entrance because there are spurts of blood on the porch and he fears he's too late. He fears Stefan got to Elena and she's lost her chance at coming back, if only years from now. He fears Bonnie was nothing more but the human nuisance Stefan snapped like a dry branch, simple collateral damage before he could get his hands on the one person he thought his humanity was linked to.

Damon's step resound on the floorboards as he gets closer to the doorway and enters the house slowly, trying to brace himself for what he'll find and picking up the sounds that come from inside. There's a pained breath, and one too many heartbeats and when he looks at the body on the sofa it takes him a long time to understand. Damon flashes to his brother's side, presses two fingers at the base of his neck to feel the stubborn heartbeat, the warmth of his feverish skin and he lets it speak to him while he turns his head to take in the desolate scenario.

He looms over Elena, his dear love, as pretty and delicate as ever. Too much for her own good and their busy schedules.

Enzo is dead and on the verge of rotting. He doesn't feel entitled to be sorry for him, thinking that he himself threatened him to rip his heart out his chest if only any harm came to Bonnie. The breath breaks in the middle of his throat thinking of her, connecting the other heartbeat – too quiet, too dull to be hers. He looks up at the ceiling, concentrating so hard he can hear the softness of cashmere hitting the tiles and he rushes up the stairs two steps at the time, stopping outside the bathroom's door, fighting the urge to uproot the door from its jamb to check on her.

Damon raises his hands against the door, his fingers only barely ghosting over the painted wood, trying to feel the breath of her from there. They don't have much time, not one card up their sleeve and he needs to tell her to swallow it and endure it until she's able to grieve, but he can't. He just can't ask her that. All he really wants to ask is for her to let him in, for her to let him be there now, the way he should have been all those years he hid away.

"Bonnie?" he calls, his voice softer than usual, but no sound comes except the one produced by a jet of water, "Bon, are you injured?"

"I swear I tried to get here as fast as I could," he explains, fear gripping at his throat because he's let her down again, because she needed him and he wasn't there. He makes one awful best friend. "Bonnie, let me check on you, now, com'on," he insists, trying not to snap, but she doesn't answer. There's only water and her sad heartbeat. And no breathing.

It scares the shit out of him. Maybe Stefan had drowned her and he's been stupidly talking to a door while her heart was losing the fight. He's about to tear the door away from the jamb when he realizes it's open.

He enters to her head re-emerging from the steaming water. The water in the bathtub has a light pink tint to it. Her hair is pushed back from her face, sleek and against her head. Her eyelashes barely flinch as a drop of water travels down its curve and falls with a deafening sound against the water's surface.

It's not a relaxing bath, obviously – he really doesn't know what this is – so there are no bubbles or lather to hide her. She got rid of her clothes, letting them fall on the pavement as she made her way to the bathtub, didn't bother with taking off her undergarments or the flashy gem hanging from her neck. She's opened the tap and ignored it since.

Bonnie is wearing a sheer underwire black bra with floral lace and a scalloped edge. The hem has a V-shape and the water makes it looks like it's painted on her skin. He does his best not to pay attention to the caramel glow of it. He's not so much of a dog to prey on his beautiful best friend when she's just lost someone she loved (the only one, but this is not the moment to hate the poor bastard), or ever.

Bonnie is sacred to him.

She has her legs bent and drawn to her so at least her sex is hidden from his eyes.

Damon calls her name again to no avail. Her eyes are empty and tired, her mind wandering somewhere else. Maybe in hell, wherever Enzo is right now. He walks to her, feeling like Stefan has ripped her away from existence, leaving the empty shell of her for him to play and torment himself with. He wants to be in whatever hell she is, and doesn't think very logically when he steps inside the tub, and lowers to kneel in front of her and drag her against his chest.

"I'm here," he says, and the touch seems to electrocute her. She makes a strangled noise. The muscles of her back seem to contract, making her wriggle like a fish trying to escape air and it hits him –the burning feeling of an exploding vessel, the realization that she's got her power back, and that she might just kill him, that she's the strongest, most powerful being he's ever held, and yet the most fragile, and broken, and needy. And he can't let her go, ever.

It's too slow, and too fast. The choked sound becomes a mad laughter, and it turns to a scream muffled against the drenched blue sweater he's wearing, until she's sobbing. Damon doesn't make a sound, only holds her while her walls break down. He can't think. His brain won't work properly. His eyesight is gone and he can barely catch spots of light though the darkness, but Bonnie's breath is warm and the trembling of her body speaks of resistance and if she can endure this so can he. His fingers sink into her hair, his palm cupping her skull, and his lips brush her temple as he tries to hold his body still for her so she can find a rope to hold on to. "It's going to be okay," he manages to say close to her ear enough that even if her breath fails him she hears him all the same, somewhere in her devastated body, while he holds on to the naked soul of her for dear life.

He presses his lips together to stop himself from drooling like a senile old man, while he recognizes the hot feeling of the blood flowing from his nose.

"I promise," he says, before he's not able to anymore.

And moments later, when he's not strong enough, he can feel her hands pushing him away. He falls back, water slashing around, his poor balance leaving him dazed and confused.

"What are you doing?" she asks, half scared, half outraged. He can't see the water turned red with his own blood, can't fathom why she would push him away (he's an awful best friend, he knows).

"What?" he replies with a strangled breath, grimacing at the loss of the contact now that the pain from his skull has dulled suddenly. He reaches his hands out, "Bon," he calls, "I just—" as the silhouette of her is floating back into his eyes but she slaps them away.

He uses the back of his hand to brush away the blood from his mouth and sees her eyes staring at the red water in the tub. She doesn't take a moment to think about getting rid of him so he just grips her wrist and pulls her against him again.

"Don't!" she yells, and he's too unprepared for it so he roars trying to keep the howl inside. She fights him, trying to keep him at a distance, and calls back her power to stop hurting him. "Go away!" But it's too hard and every time her emotions slip, so do her powers.

He should have stayed away, but he touched her instead. He touched her and destroyed the tranquility of her emptiness, pushed the breath back into her lungs and dragged her soul back into its place like it was that easy.

"I'm not leaving you, again," he says, unreasonable and blind in his devotion. "Deal with it," he adds, gripping the hair on the back of her skull to bring her closer to his lips so that he can press a wet kiss against her forehead. "It might be a sucky deal for you, but whatever you're losing, you won't lose me."

"You don't understand. ..I lost my heart," she murmurs, eyes down on the wet fabric of his sweater that now looks black.

"You didn't," he reassures her, "I can hear it. You melted my brain off and I couldn't see a fucking thing, but your heart, I could hear it clear as a bell. It has such a nice sound. If you killed me here that's what I might miss the most."

Damon can hear her whine pitifully, and it makes for a tender distraction now that her slippery skin under his palms and against the wet fabric of his clothes is becoming more and more unavoidable.

"What about my sanity?" she asks, "Because he's all I ever had that was mine and now I lost it and I might just go crazy."

It would be too easy and too insensitive, even for him, to tell her that he doubted her sanity (and maybe, later and for different reasons, his own) the moment he knew she was dating Enzo in the first place, so he tries to switch the subject to himself instead. "I'm your best friend," he says, trying to sound vaguely offended, "I'm yours, too. I even withdraw Alaric's badge, because you're the only one."

"No," she denies, sounding tired and on the verge of collapsing against him, "You're Elena's."

The sunset filtering from the blinds is golden and it bothers his, now sensitive, eyes. He lowers his gaze to avoid the light and all he can see is fingertips against caramel skin and the thin strap of her black bra right next to the outline of his short, white nail.

"I think we both know, by now," he begins, tilting his head so that his cheek is pressed against the top of her head, "that there is a part of me that no one else can ever have, but you." He confesses, curling up above her, making himself a shelter of flesh and bones.


End file.
